we can only multitask via task-switching

That's my day. Jumping from crisis to even more urgent crisis and back again over and over. It's expected. If anyone was only able to do one thing at a time, they'd not last long here. Priorities shift, often by the minute. You could be halfway through analysing half a million rows of data diagnosing an issue then dropping that, diving into source code for something else, drop that to have a quick meeting to agree a design point, back to the source code then back to the data, and that's within a 30min window. I'd say I have a lousy memory but I'm still expected to jump about and pick up where I left off.

I'm in my fifties, I've been programming for ~35 years and I've never used a whiteboard. I've sat there whilst others do but it's rarely programming related, usually tuning requirements. If I need to plan something out I use paper. If it's big, I grab a bit of A3 off the printer.

I'm in the UK and I've only ever workd in open plan offices. Never seen a cubicle in my life. We have entire open floors with maybe 500 people per floor. Everyone is on banks of desks, 4 each side facing each other, row after row. Quite often it's all hot desking anyway so very few people customise their space in any way. I did once, briefly but my stuff got pinched (prob cleaners or 'security'). We have breakout rooms for instant meetings but personally I find myself far more productive when I can just wander over and ask someone a question rather than wait for an IM or email to be responded to. Almost no one uses headphones and absolutely no one has audible music. Even having a ringtone is frowned upon, vibrate only. As I've never been in any other environment (and I'm now in my fifties) I really can't see the issue with concentration, you either tune out the chatter or find a breakout room for the rare times you really need to focus.

Chances are the fake films are better than the one you thought you were getting.

Certainly true that compressed (as in dynamic range) audio is far more tiring to listen to. Puts me off buying new music to a large extent. I tend to buy stuff from indies which outside EDM is rarely buggered like this.

Have a virtual mod point. That is very interesting and quite surprising. Still working through the comments.

A lot of this argument IMO hinges on when you grew up/got into music. I'm quite happy to accept (as an old git) that high resolution digital audio beats an album on vinyl hands down in terms of true fidelity. However, to *my* ears, because I grew up with vinyl, I find that sound more appealing and enjoyable. I have albums on everything from cassette, vinyl, CDs, MP3s to FLAC. Even some 24bit high res files. Yes, there's some incredible detail in there with modern formats. However, for whatever reason, I just don't enjoy listening to it as much. In many cases it's because they're mastered too hot and have stupid waveforms with almost no dynamic range, although the high res formats are better in that respect. I find vinyl just more enjoyable and relaxing to listen to. Plus of course there's the well worn stuff about the cover, reading the lyric sheet without a magnifying glass etc. As far as crackles/pops/wear and tear goes, I've got records that are nearly 40 years old but still more enjoyable to my ears/brain. It beats me how people's records get so beaten up, are they tracking too heavy? Pouring grit down the sleeve? Maybe 5% of mine from 30+ years ago have anything more than a little surface noise when the stylus hits the lead in groove. After that, no pops or crackles.

Not sure where all this revisionism is coming from. The Loudness Wars and the move to very hot mixes was driven purely by the demands of the record companies wanting their tracks to stand out on commercial radio stations, who were already doing the same thing themselves anyway. Anything that can make your song stand out (and loudness works) was deemed a Good Thing.

My old Technics SL-B2 (http://www.vinylengine.com/library/technics/sl-b2.shtml) was belt drive and has the strobe and adjustment. Quite a few manufacturers had the same on belt drive. Not seen it on an idler driver deck though.

You want a better analogy?

We had planes with props for what... 30 years before someone started to develop the jet engine. Are you saying the jet engine was pointless because we already had the power to fly? No... and the first development articles were less powerful than the props they were aiming to supplant or augment. Some people just had ideas and vision that this was a technology that would go somewhere and they were right.

Now granted, that was one component and what Scaled Composites is trying to do is test a bunch of components and technologies at once. That may or may not be the right move, but they're doing it with (currently) Richard Branson's money and intend to use the money from the space tourists to continue to advance those technologies. The entire mission statement of the company is that they want to advance flight.... you can neither do that in a void nor without risk. Flying is risky... ask me; I'm a pilot who had a near miss in a Cessna with a bizjet a few years ago. I was lucky I survived... but that didn't stop me flying. I accept the risk for the pleasure it gives me and it gives me no appreciable gain other than the experience of having done it. I don't fly planes for travel... I fly planes for the pleasure of flying. By your arguments I should stop immediately... but what do you care because it's my money I'm using for my pleasure... and it's a pleasure that many others before me died for?

Honestly, if I were in that financial position to spend the money on a VG flight I probably would just to say I'd done it and just for the experience. And yes, I'd accept the risk because flight and especially SPACE flight is inherently dangerous. You don't have the stomach for it... I get it. That doesn't make it wrong. You are risk averse, I am not... if I were I'd probably still be living in Belfast and most likely spent most of my life on the dole instead of building a life for myself in another country (the USA). That was also something filled with risk... but I decided the risks were worth the potential reward. I was right.

What could possibly go wrong...

Seriously, why not do it yourself? You can get a pretty cheap virtual host from any number of providers and just do it. You don't even have to manage the entire server, plenty of virtual hosting services too... but personally I'd recommend doing the entire server. My Linode is cheap as hell and provides a great place to host my mail and web host, as well as providing a hub for my VPN network. Yes, I have to manage it as well, but apart from the occasion patches I don't really do much with it once it was all set up except use it.

That's a good point. There's a few 80 column word processing solutions but I don't recall seeing anything for spreadsheets.

You could also get Visicalc on the Atari 400/800.

You could also get 123 for various Unix flavours. I used it on DEC Ultrix.